


Thermodynamic Heart

by writerdragonfly



Series: Thermodynamic Heart Verse [1]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Child Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-31
Updated: 2016-08-31
Packaged: 2018-08-12 02:55:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7917748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writerdragonfly/pseuds/writerdragonfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their father had one rule: If you manifest, no one can know what you can do.  </p><p>Rodney kept to that rule long after their father was dead. Until he couldn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thermodynamic Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [respoftw](https://archiveofourown.org/users/respoftw/gifts).



> This has not been edited, fair warning. 
> 
> respoftw, I asked if you wanted a birthday fic, didn't wait for an answer, and then wrote you one anyway. It just took a few extra days to finish because it did not go as planned. And also, I am easily distracted. (Surprise?)
> 
> And I made a thing! A cover thing. Admittedly, my skills are limited. BUT HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY?

 

He’s eighteen when he manifests. It’s cold, his car is broken down and Jeannie is asleep in the backseat.

 

He’s elbow deep in his engine when his fingers start to warm up, heat moving from his fingers and up his arms. He has to shrug off his coat when he starts to sweat, the heavy snowfall melting before it can even touch his skin.

 

He fixes the car and gets back onto the road. He doesn’t see anyone for miles, by which time the snow has tapered off.

 

-x-

 

Rodney never knew their biological mother. He’d met her once, when he was young.

 

But she had been paid to carry them, not raise them.

 

And she’d been paid well.

 

-x-

 

Their father had one rule they were supposed to follow over everything else.

 

_If you manifest, no one can know what you can do._

 

-x-

 

He doesn’t tell his father when Jeannie manifests. She’s nine years old and crying because she can feel that her dinner used to be alive, used to be a living animal.

 

Jeannie doesn’t tell their father either.

 

They remember Maisie.

 

-x-

 

“ _Another failure_ ,” their father yells, throwing his glass and narrowly missing Rodney’s face.

 

The glass shatters against the wall.

 

The baby screams, her cries loud and wailing.

 

Jeannie hides behind Rodney’s leg, her little body shaking.

 

The baby is silenced.

 

-x-

 

When their father dies, Rodney is twenty-four. Jeannie emancipates herself with Rodney’s help, goes right back to her freshman year of college and acts like nothing’s changed.

 

And maybe it hasn’t.

 

If there had been love for their father, it had died alongside their sister.

 

-x-

 

No one knows what Rodney can do. He hadn’t told Jeannie. Hadn’t wanted her in the position where she might feel compelled to tell their father.

 

And by the time he was dead, he had kept it secret long enough that he balked at the idea of telling anyone, even her.

 

So he doesn’t, and stays silent instead.

 

-x-

 

The night Jeannie gets married, Rodney manages to keep himself contained until he’s far enough away that no one sees him.

 

The cost of replacing is rental car is far less than the idea of anyone dying because he couldn’t handle fighting with her.

 

-x-

 

It isn’t easy, keeping a tight reign on his manifestation. Over the years, more than one partner complains about how hot he runs, how sweaty his palms sometimes get.

 

He keeps his labs running colder than they should be, and sometimes yelling at idiots is the only way he keeps the temperature low enough to be bearable.

 

Sometimes, his labs still get too hot, until he has to leave before something happens that he can’t hide.

 

-x-

 

Cats never mind the heat, though.

 

-x-

 

He likes Siberia more than he should. It’s cold there, and no one pays attention if his room is too warm for the thermostat setting.

 

No one really pays attention to him at all, just his work.

 

-x-

  
Antarctica is different. Still cold, but people pay attention to him. They notice if he’s only wearing a threadbare t-shirt. They notice if his labs are warmer than they should be.

 

It takes weeks for him to disable the heating in his labs and mockup a temperature gauge that looks like his thermostat instead.

 

No one wants to touch him more than usual, so no one notices when his skin is hot.

 

Antarctica is better than Cheyenne Mountain had been, back around the time of his exile.

 

But not by much.

 

-x-

 

The Chair Room is cold when Carson ushers them in. It’s cold and it hadn’t been cold just a short time before and Rodney...

 

Rodney doesn’t know why.

 

Except, there’s a mostly unfamiliar man in the Chair and the closer Rodney gets, the colder he feels.

 

“Major,” Rodney says, recognizing him as one of the McMurdo pilots that he’d only ever seen from a distance, “think about where we are in the solar system.”

 

A hologram appears above him, planets circling around the sun.

 

“Did I do that?” the Major asks, his voice soft.

 

Ice crystals form in a circle going outward from the chair, slow moving spirals and sharp edges.

 

Rodney meets the man’s eyes briefly, flickering from the holographic display above to the floor and back up again.

 

A hint of fear, then stubborn denial meets him.

 

Rodney flattens his palm out, hovering briefly and warmly, over the man’s hand.

 

Surprise, then something like joy.

 

“Why’s the floor wet?” Elizabeth asks a beat later, grabbing onto Daniel Jackson’s arm when she slips.

 

The corner of Rodney’s mouth flickers briefly up, matching the Major’s.

 

-x-

 

They don't talk about it. Too many people are constantly around, too many cameras when they're alone.

 

But Sheppard gravitates to him. Sits on a stool in Rodney’s lab when he's off duty, soaks up the excess heat that sloughs off Rodney like snakeskin, cools the ever present fire beneath Rodney’s skin, until Rodney feels _human_ again.

 

Until Sheppard does too.

 

-x-

 

“Imagine what you could do with a power like that, Meredith,” his father told him one night, gesturing toward the lab where the embryos were stored, “imagine how much better than everyone else you could be.”

 

Rodney had stared down at his hands, remembering Maisie and wondering if his father had always been this way.

 

He thinks about that a lot sometimes.

 

-x-

 

“You’re coming with, right?” Rodney asks Sheppard over the phone as he finishes the last of his packing in his room at the Outpost.

 

“On the expedition?”

 

“No, to _Mars_ ,” Rodney responds sarcastically.

 

Sheppard snorts instead of actually speaking, which Rodney reads as “ _I’m rolling my eyes at you_ ,” or perhaps that arched eyebrow thing.

 

Which, fair. He supposes Mars probably isn’t actually out of the realm of possibility, all things considered.

 

“Yes, the expedition. You are going, right?”

 

There’s a long drawn out pause, but then John Sheppard answers, his voice low and soft, “Yeah, McKay. I’m coming.”

 

-x-

 

Rodney joins Sheppard on the Atlantis side of the Stargate, walks alongside him toward the stairs.

 

Every step Sheppard takes almost sounds like a song inside his head, the city lighting up with every movement.

 

“Major Sheppard, watch out!” Elizabeth yells, and Rodney grabs Sheppard’s hand without thinking about it, pulling him back before he can step forward.

 

“For what?” Sheppard asks just a hair before Rodney, neither one of them seeing anything unusual in front or to the side of them.

 

“The floor, it’s icing over under your feet,” Elizabeth says, pointing at their boots.

 

There are the same spirals of frost surrounding Sheppard’s boots, a pattern from the gate all the way up the stairs where they stand.

 

“Oh,” Sheppard manages to say, and Rodney can see it click in Elizabeth Weir’s mind that John already knew.

 

“Don’t you think that’s something we--”

 

“No, it’s really none of your business, Dr. Weir,” Rodney blurts out before Sheppard can manage any sort of defense.

 

And Elizabeth’s eyes go narrowed and angry.

 

“You were aware that Major Sheppard was affecting Ancient tech--”

 

“It has nothing to do with his ATA gene,” Rodney says, and he's suddenly aware that he's still holding Sheppard’s hand when it goes almost aching cold.

 

“What else could it--” Elizabeth starts, before she's cut off by O’Neill on the other side of the gate.

 

-x-

 

It's easy for Rodney to forget about Elizabeth’s reaction for awhile. The underwater city’s failing shield is enough to distract all of them from it.

 

The city is cold, Rodney had turned off the HVAC systems as soon as he'd found them in order to save the power, with little complaint.

 

He knows he's radiating heat around him, and he knows someone is going to notice before long, but he doesn't let himself think about it.

 

Doesn't let himself worry.

 

Trying to save them from drowning takes priority over someone finding out his secret, it has to.

 

Living seems more important.

 

Especially with someone to live for.

 

-x-

 

“No, Major. Even if I could trust you after what happened earlier, I wouldn't let you go.”

 

“Elizabeth--”

 

“Don't you dare start, Rodney. You didn't tell me about--”

 

Rodney slams his tablet down, ignoring the surprised looks from everyone else in the room.

 

“I shut down the heating in the city hours ago,” he says, his hands balled into fists, “are you still cold?”

 

“Am I--what is that supposed to--”

 

“It was cold when we came into the city. Are you still cold? The heating hasn't been on in hours.”

 

“No. It’s gotten warmer since we raised--”

 

His right hand flares, pale yellow and orange flames licking up from his fist in the vague shape of a ball.

 

“It wouldn't warm that quickly, Elizabeth.” Rodney meets her wide, frightened eyes slowly.

 

“ _McKay_ ,” John Sheppard says, and it sounds almost strangled.

 

Rodney shakes his hand out, the flames slowly flickering away, and then he looks at Sheppard, who looks like he's just been given some precious gift that he never expected to get.

 

“He's not any different from the man he was before we stepped through the gate,” Rodney says, and then he’s walking out of the room.

 

“Coming, Major?” He asks when he reaches the doorway.

 

-x-

 

“You really want to save them?” Rodney asks, his still too warm hand brushing against Sheppard’s aching cold one.

 

“I need to,” Sheppard says, and Rodney nods.

 

-x-

 

“I always wanted to be a superhero,” he says, walking into the ship bay just ahead of Sheppard.

 

“Really? Read a lot of comics?”

 

“After I manifested--”

 

“Is that what you call it? Manifesting?”

 

“My father called it that. He was a geneticist.”

 

“A genet--did he do this to you deliberately?” Sheppard asks, stopping Rodney with a icy hand on his arm.

 

He looks incensed, he looks angry on _Rodney’s_ behalf.

 

“Probably. He's dead, so it doesn't matter. And look,” Rodney says, shaking his head as if shaking away the memories, “Spaceships.”  

 

Sheppard looks away from Rodney, seeing the ships for the first time.

 

“You...”

 

“She might still say no,” Rodney interrupts, but there's a hint of a smile on his face.

 

John Sheppard kisses him, a hard fast kiss before he climbs inside the nearest ship.

 

-x-

 

“Say Rodney?” John asks him a while later, still in the pilot seat.

 

“Hmm?” Rodney replies, distracted by the diagnostics on the dash.

 

“You want to be intergalactic superheroes?”

 

Rodney wants to learn, to do, to experiment. He wants to learn the secrets of the Ancients, wants to earn a Nobel Prize and shove everyone’s face in it.

 

But he meets John’s eyes and thinks, yes, I do.

 

“What do you think of Solar Flare?”

**Author's Note:**

> And they all lived happily ever after. Also, the Wraith didn't stand a chance, and Sumner supports them after their BAMF rescue skills. u__u
> 
> In all seriousness, I may have rushed it a bit because it really wanted to be a huge fic and I would probably never finish it if I kept at the pace it wanted. Comments, questions, etc., are welcome. <3


End file.
